FactoryTalk ViewPoint

My goal is to be able to have an HMI as well as a Status Monitor (a TV that shows what machines are down, percentage of cylce time, etc.). The HMI runs FactoryTalk ME on an industrial PC. Unfortunately, FactoryTalk ViewPoint won't work as mentioned in the Tech Connect article: 277832 - FactoryTalk ViewPoint support on a PC running FactoryTalk View ME Station.

So, I'm not sure what the best way to go about how to display information on the Status Monitor. What do you recommend?

I like using large TVs connected to a thin client running a web app.

SD_Scott, how do you go about getting the tags from the PLC to this web app?

Bbarnett said:

SD_Scott, how do you go about getting the tags from the PLC to this web app?

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Good question. I use SQL server to store data from the PLCs. I usually have several tables that represent different types of production data. You can read the PLC with anything from scada to custom services and send it to SQL. I use custom written windows services.

Most recently I have used SignalR to update the web pages. It can update web pages almost real time. There are other ways to update the page though. Ajax etc.

I have a CIP direct driver that I wrote that I use in various windows services. The services are passthrough and can create tags and groups dynamically(Yes groups). So there are no tags declared in the service. All of the tags are stored in SQL. If you want to add a tag to read or write, you just add it to the SQL table. The tag gets created and added to a group then read or written to the PLC.

So a simple system would be a few PLCs with one windows service reading tags and "upserting" (if exists update else insert) the tag data in SQL. The web page gets the data from the SQL table. How you choose to update the page is up to you. SignalR is really nice but might be more than you want to mess with. Long polling may be just fine.

When I send data to a PLC from a web page I use WCF to send the data from the web page to a windows service that is connected to the PLCs. This way the web servers are not directly connected to the production layer. This would be for wireless hand scanners that are used for scanning material and sending interlocks to the PLC.

Hope that helps some.

I have never used ME on a PC, does it support dual monitors? One for normal, one for the TV?

I would recommend the Red Lion Productivity station, but it is overkill and quite expensive. Weintek makes something similar:

https://www.weintek.com/globalw/Product/Product_mTV.aspx

I have not used their products, but they have a good reputation.